New Delhi, March 5 (BNA): Four months after India announced its “net zero” target at the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, the country has yet to present its targets for reducing global warming emissions, underscoring the difficulty of energy reform. Politics amid a growing population, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
When asked about the delay during an unrelated event in the capital, New Delhi, on Tuesday, India’s Environment Minister Bhubandar Yadav downplayed it, saying that several ministries were still discussing the matter to draw a roadmap.
India’s environment ministry, which formulates the targets and submits them to the United Nations climate agency, and the country’s top federal official at the energy ministry, did not respond to requests for comment this week.
“We don’t have time anymore” to wait for all countries to start reducing emissions, said Niclas Hohn, a scientist at the New Climate Institute, which tracks pledges on emissions from the Climate Action Tracking Program.
Hoon added that it would be useful for India to set goals that can be achieved with its own resources and developed a clear plan of what can be achieved with financial assistance from other countries.
During a November conference in Glasgow, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his country would stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by 2070 — two decades after the United States, and 10 years after China. He said India would increase its current capacity of non-fossil fuel electricity to 500 gigawatts and use energy from clean sources to meet half of its needs. Modi also said India would reduce carbon emissions by 1 billion tons compared to the previous target and reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by 45%.
Since the 2030 targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions have yet to be submitted to the United Nations climate agency, they cannot yet be factored into the global effort.
India is not the only country that is slow to meet the goals. The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, signed by India, requires countries to submit their climate targets, called Nationally Determined Contributions, by the end of 2020. Many countries have missed this deadline. The most urgent deadline was for the surrender before the November negotiations in Glasgow, and most nations did. Among the top five emitters, India alone did not present its plans.
The delays underscore the challenges India faces in achieving these goals. A parliamentary committee has calculated that India will require investments of more than $20 billion to achieve its clean energy goals, with only half of that available – leading the opposition to ask the government if it has formulated a clear roadmap before committing internationally.
India’s role is central to the world’s climate goals. It has the third highest emissions in the world, after China and the United States, and its energy needs are expected to grow faster than any other country in the coming decades. At the same time, historically, it has contributed to the minimum cumulative global emissions among the Group of Twenty industrial nations known as the G20.
For example, the typical American uses 16 times more electricity than the average Indian, according to World Bank data.
Many of the South Asian nation of 1.4 billion people still live in poverty, and its leaders have consistently argued that it needs “carbon space” to grow. Even in the most optimistic scenario, some of India’s future energy needs must be met through coal – the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions.
This was partly why the country demanded a last-minute change to critical language during the United Nations climate conference to “reduce” rather than “phasing out” coal power. India said that developing countries “have a right to responsible use of fossil fuels” for their growth and blamed the “unsustainable lifestyles and wasteful consumption patterns” of rich countries for the current climate catastrophe.
In any case, India faces the same reality as other countries: Unless emissions are drastically reduced, large parts of the world will become uninhabitable due to climate shocks such as deadly fires, floods and unlivable heat, a new United Nations report said on Monday. . The country lost $87 billion in 2020 due to natural disasters such as cyclones, floods and droughts, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
In Glasgow, Modi stressed that India’s goals could not be achieved without adequate climate finance, a stance India has long reiterated, and called on rich nations to provide $1 trillion in aid.
The lack of funding is a vital stumbling block, said Harjit Singh, a consultant with Climate Action Network International. He said that if he put himself in the shoes of the finance minister of a developing country like India, “How can I do that if I don’t find an influx of funding? Rich countries fail in their commitment.”
Singh said there was some hope in the plan announced by the United States, Britain, France and Germany to provide $8.5 billion in loans and grants over five years to help South Africa phase out coal, the source of 90% of electricity. But he added that it was not yet clear whether the money would be made for those most affected.
India’s opposition MPs criticized the government for not consulting prime ministers or state leaders before the Zero Zero India targets were announced in December in Parliament. Parliamentarian Kanemozi Karunanidhi said India has only a fraction of the solar energy needed to meet what he promised in Glasgow.
“I want to know how we can achieve so much?” Karunanidhi, from Thothukudi in southern India, said, “What we have done is nothing compared to what we promised the world.”
AOQ